Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Twenty Years of Computing


It has been 20 years since I bought my first computer; an ATARI 520ST. Those who knew me at that time thought that I was the least likely person to buy a Personal Computer. Few people had Personal Computers back in 1986. It cost $1,600.00 (quite a lot of money then) to buy. The operating system was on a floppy disk that you had to load at start-up. It had 512 kilobytes of memory - that's 1/2 a megabyte! I could add another 512 kilobytes of memory for only $1,000.00! It had no hard Drive. It had a colour monitor. It was a marvel! My Mom was even afraid to touch it. . . thought it would "take over." I sure learned a lot.

What I didn't realize at that time that PC's were just coming out of Infancy and taking the first Baby Steps; to become Humanity's greatest tool. Every Industry has been changed amazingly.

Remember that we are still essentially at the beginning of the Computer Age. I wonder what will happen in the next 20 years.